We are expanding like crazy these days, which is a good thing. The problem that I am currently facing is trying to get in contact with good local IT professionals in a remote state. I am out of our corporate office in Lansing, MI and looking for a good vendor in Tampa, Florida. What have you done in your experience in order to find a good IT consultant that will be fair and good?

OK so if you're not looking for initial set-up, but ongoing tech support, I'd first just make sure I had good remote support tools in place (LogMeIn, VNC) and secured. KBOX by Kace (now Dell) is a good support product, though not free.

You should rarely need on-site support. Contacting someone like CDW or another national support company should get you someone good. If you're worried about them, ask for references from other IT people that they've helped in the past.

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I used to open/close/move half a dozen office per year. I always insisted on visiting the site--especially for the initial setup. From there I relied on a power user in each location (that was before all the remote options we have today)

I run into this all the time. The best way for me to find vendors and have had success is to contact my current vendors and allow them to make recommendations for me. We have over 30+ remote sites and vendors like CDW have been very helpful. When it comes to printer repairs, RhinoTek, is the best in business and does not matter where you are located they have contacts every where.

My initial visit was actually to set up the office. Many of the offices were not too far (southern Michigan) so we had our cabling vendor do the cabling, or he would find someone for us local if he couldn't do it.

Before going, we'd go over the blueprints for the space and plan drops, wiring closet, server room, etc..

He would go and do the cabling, test, label, etc... then I'd follow when he was done and install the server, router, printers, etc...

I would pre-configure these at the HQ so all I had to do onsite was plug it in and contact our ISP at the scheduled time for testing and verification.

The next day I'd be there to make sure all computers were set up (usually small offices, 10 people or less). Another IT guy at HQ would verify remote access to the server (BDC in those days) and to the router and that was basically it.

We had 20+ remote offices and it wasn't too bad. They learned quickly to not even call if they hadn't rebooted already.

Are you talking about initial office set-up, or ongoing support for them?

Personally? I'd develop an in-house model of how I want a remote office configured. If I had to parachute a network rack in, what would be in it? How would it be configured (VLAN of my main network connected via VPN? Or something else?)? How would the office be cabled (drops per wall? Pre punched down connections between racks?)?

You can contract all the installation and maintenance stuff out to a company like CDW. In fact, I think they'll even help you develop the initial plan. Though I'd go into that meeting with a strong agenda and pick their brains for the things I've forgotten, not the other way around.

This would be an ongoing support as the office grew. We have another Florida branch (2 people). This branch is going to probably be about 4 ~ 6 individuals. Mostly laptops/thin clients, a MFP and a VPN connection back to our office. We run Citrix Xenapp environment as well.

OK so if you're not looking for initial set-up, but ongoing tech support, I'd first just make sure I had good remote support tools in place (LogMeIn, VNC) and secured. KBOX by Kace (now Dell) is a good support product, though not free.

You should rarely need on-site support. Contacting someone like CDW or another national support company should get you someone good. If you're worried about them, ask for references from other IT people that they've helped in the past.

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